liGo NEWS

Lean Setting for Wi-Fi

We’ve heard the results. We’ve watched the news items. We know Wi-Fi connectivity intended for city-wide applications have yet to satisfy a large portion of the digital industry. And while a number of consumer electronics like cordless phones equipped with Wi Fi, indeed, make life easier, pundits and professionals, believers and skeptics—and those in between—agree that Wi Fi for city-wide applications remains a woefully unrealized technology at best.

However, it seems the opposite is true for locations like Owensboro, Ky and Rancho, N.M.. Wi Fi networks have already been built in these places. And surprise, surprise, instead of residents inveighing against troubles and difficulties that some industry experts predicted and skeptics anticipated, applications proceeded with very few problems. That is, cordless phones as well as other devices equipped with Wi Fi performed well and able. Internet access was easy. Communications happened with few glitches. There was, in essence, none of the major setbacks that bedeviled Wi Fi ventures in the city.

The notion of building free wireless Internet zones across a number of towns all over the country already took quite a beating during the summer. Places like San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and St. Louis all encountered a bevy of troubles that made the project next to impossible to accomplish in their respective areas, given each city’s current resources in particular. Wanting to provide residents with easy Wi Fi access, all major cities were more than justified in trying to get the project off the ground.

The only snag was the fact that Wi Fi was not well suited to applications of such scale. Those behind the project eventually realized this. After which, the subsequent collapse of a number of major metropolitan ventures began to induce negative forecasts for municipal Wi Fi undertakings. Business models remained unapproved. The excited buzzing around the projects fizzled out. Talks on the subject turned dismissive as well as pessimistic.

Take for instance the extreme corporate shake-up that involved Earthlink, one of the biggest companies in municipal wireless. In the same few days, the Atlanta-based Internet provider abandoned its much-touted plans to construct a wireless network for San Francisco, faced a $5 million fine from Houston for failing to meet the agreed-upon contractual deadline for rolling out the said city’s network, and announced it would shed some 900 jobs – this was more than half of its staff, which was an overwhelming number indeed – including the company’s head of municipal Wi-Fi.

Then came the St. Louis incident. This time, it involved a $12 million plan that was halted this summer before it was even put to its paces. It transpired when AT&T and the city could not find a suitable way to deal with an electricity snarl. Engineers were intent on securing the Wi-Fi hubs to the street lamps, hoping that they could also utilize the bank switches that power the light poles to also power the routers. The major pickle was: the lamp systems are off during the day.